"We Have a Language Problem Here:" Linguistic Identity in East Africa

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2009
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
East Africa is home to incredible linguistic diversity. Indigenous languages, African linguas franca, and imperial languages foster a social landscape with diverse linguistic identities. Kiswahili and English are fixtures across East Africa, each bringing constructed histories to overlapping speaker populations: a web of language attitudes that is wrapped in the social and cultural history of the people of East Africa. The following work examines linguistic identities through interviews that I conducted during the summer of 2008 in Kenya and Tanzania. Contemporary linguistic identity is informed by a discussion of lexical change in Kiswahili – loan words from Arabic and English – just one observable change in the history of the language with an impact on Swahili identity. The paper begins with a discussion of the Kiswahili lexicon and lexical borrowing in Kiswahili as a way to concretize subsequent discussions of linguistic identity. I follow with a discussion of research methods and practices before analyzing key interviews. The study of identity is necessarily qualitative, and this paper aims to problemetize concepts of linguistic identity in modern East Africa by detailing the language attitudes of a small group of respondents from across the region. Identity in East Africa is mutable, and individuals constantly navigate social and ethnic spaces through strategic uses of language. Here all language use is political, a reflection of power with real world consequences.
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